After a long career at Barron's, I joined Forbes as San Francisco bureau chief in December 2010. I've been writing about technology and investing for more than 25 years. With the Tech Trade, I've picked up where I left off when I was writing the Tech Trader Daily blog at Barrons.com. When I'm not working, you can find me riding my road bike around the Bay Area hills, managing my fantasy baseball team, rooting for my beloved Phillies and Eagles and hanging out in the Valley with my family. You can follow me on Facebook, on Twitter (@savitz), and on Google+.

Mary Meeker Talks Twitter, Waze, Venture Capital And More

A: [Laughing.] Yes, and he’s a great poet. He has a great sense of humor. Chi-Hua Chien, who focused early on social networking, is absolutely on top of the data, what’s going on with pricing, what’s going on with take-up rates of different products. Mike Abbott, a great engineer, helped build the engineering team at Twitter. [Still pointing around the room through the glass.] Brook Byers, huge experience with investing in all sorts of tech companies, especially in life sciences. Ray Lane, on leadership. John Doerr, on thinking about big ideas, and yes, I’ve seen this movie before, yes, I can make this call and get this done. Juliet de Baubigny, and Jordan Ormont and Andy Chen on how to recruit teams. Megan Quinn, with her consumer product experience at Square and Google, Stephanie Tilenius with her background in commerce, payments and non-USA markets. Al Gore and Colin Powell, with great world views. I could go on and on.

A: Right, Bill Joy on big data, and how you scale infrastructure. I haven’t been disappointed that these people are around, and they are accessible. I joke that the good news is, you send out an email and ask for help, you get the help. The bad news is, everybody has an opinion. [She smiles.]

Q: That’s a lot of informed opinions.

A: Pound-for-pound, it is a pretty impressive organization.

Q: When you were thinking about making this move, did you think about running – or starting – a hedge fund instead?

A: When you are involved in the capital markets now, they are trading all the time. In the early days, there was an ebb and a flow, my focus was on what was going on the United States stock market, the NYSE and the Nasdaq. As the world became more global, on Sunday nights, you had to see how assets opened in the Asian markets, and what’s going on with oil prices, and interest rates, and Latin American currencies, and so on. I would spend 25% of my time dealing with things over which I had no control, and did not particularly have expertise. I would try to understand and react to these epic events in the world.

Q: Things over which you had no direct control or input.

A: I would spend 25% of my time dealing with those kinds of things that were related to the companies that I covered, but where I wasn’t totally in the mix. And then I was spending a lot of time writing, and a lot of time articulating. A key difference is that here I can really spend time with the companies, helping grow and build businesses in the way we can at Kleiner. That goes back to the loose federation of company builders. It’s investing, but it’s not investing in a hands-off way; it’s investing in a hands-on way.

Q: You get to apply things you’ve learned from seeing the technology industry evolve over the last three decades to the creation of new companies.

A: I bought my first PC in 1981. Then in 1984, when I was at Cornell, Dan’l Lewin [a former Apple exec who now runs Microsoft’s Silicon Valley office] and Steve Jobs picked two dozen schools [including Cornell] and proliferated them with Macintoshes. There were like 100 Macs in each of those schools. I was captivated by it. I’ve seen the growth and participated in it. Now I’m surrounded by a team that has seen those patterns before and knows how to engage. It is active investing, not passive investing. We only want to invest in a company where we can engage and add value and help grow the business. A lot of folks here could do different things, but this is a special place to work, and people get excited about entrepreneurs and big ideas, and trying to change the world.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.